


1984: Tapes & Documents

by arboretum



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 05:03:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arboretum/pseuds/arboretum
Summary: Post-MGSV self-indulgence. Five unrelated ficlets. Some of this is just me working out my feelings.  Some are bits from something longer I was planning on writing and which I doubt I ever will at this point.1.line in the sand— the long-awaited reunion.2.handiwork— Enjoy it, you son of a bitch, he thought, viciously and crudely.3.close the door— Finally Ocelot spread his palms and said, “Well, that’s about the long and short of it.”4.there is nothing left inside me now— “No,” Kaz said humorlessly, “That’s right. We exhumed the corpse. Disinfected you inside and out. You’re good to go.”5.nothing but white noise— “Let’s,” Kaz said.





	1. line in the sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long-awaited reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thesis: I genuinely do not think BB has the brain capacity to understand what the fuck he did or why the fuck Kaz is mad lmfao

* * *

 

\- Do you remember when we first met, Snake?  You called me a samurai.

\- I remember.  I didn’t expect to see so much spirit in a man who had just been thoroughly defeated.

\- I’ve always had a lot of pride.  Maybe too much.  I’ve been told it’s a flaw; but you saw it and you — (a careful pause) — liked it.

\- I did.

\- This is where we are, Snake.  This is what you’ve pushed me to.  I can’t come back to you now.  You understand that, right?  I can’t.

\- (awkwardly, like he’s turning over a stone he’d rather not) You told me one time —

\- Oh, no, you don’t.

\- — that you loved me.

\- (silence)

\- Snake, if you have to ask me if I loved you, you don’t know anything about me.

\- (silence)

\- I loved you.  I still love you.  I can’t stop.  It’s an illness and it’s eating away at me.

\- Then come back with me, Kaz.

\- I told you, I can’t.

\- (slowly) I don’t know if I know what love is.

\- (scoffing)

\- Back when we first met, EVA once asked me if I loved… her.

\- The Boss.

\- Yeah.

\- And?

\- I don’t know.  It wasn’t like that.  It was more than that.  It wasn’t like people say love is supposed to be like.  It wasn’t like a story.  Or — a movie.  It wasn’t, I didn’t —

\- (silence)

\- She was meaningful to me.

\- Hm.

\- You’re meaningful to me.

\- If that’s a love declaration, it’s a pretty fucking weak attempt, Snake.

\- Why don’t you ask me?

\- (a long pause) I don’t want to know.

\- If I’ve loved anyone, Kaz, it’s probably been you.

\- (harsh laughter)

\- Kaz.

\- Great.  Wonderful.  I’m really glad.

\- …Kaz.

\- As it turns out, I love me too.  And I’ve been put in a position where I can either continue to love me, or I can love you.  And I’m going to give you this one, Snake, it’s a freebie so enjoy it, but even after everything I’ve gone through, even after all you’ve put me through, I want to choose you.  You know that, don’t you?  That’s why you’re here.  You know I love you more than I love myself.

\- (silence)

\- But I’m not going to choose you, Snake.  I can’t choose you.  I have a feeling, you see, that a line has been drawn, and if I cross that line, I, Kazuhira Miller, will cease to be.  And even if part of me thinks he might be ok with that — (trails off)

(long silence)

\- Ok, Kaz.  You don’t have to come with me.

\- (a disbelieving laugh)

\- What is it now?

\- (hoarse) Thanks, I think.  For giving up on me a second time.  I think I needed that.

\- …I don’t know what you want, Kaz.

\- Me neither, Snake.  Funny.  I’ve been lost since the day I met you.


	2. handiwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy it, you son of a bitch, he thought, viciously and crudely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even believe in this BB. this is crude. lol. it is literally titled in my documents, "crude bbkaz." take it as you will.

* * *

 

“You know, Kaz,” said Snake, two fingers deep in his ass and a hand around his dick, “You’re not so unlike a gun.”

“Oh yeah?” said Kaz. “How so?”

“Once you learn the way a gun works” — punctuated with a crook of his fingers — “you can get it to perform with remarkable consistency every time. Of course, not everyone takes the time to learn the quirks and foibles of their weapons, more’s the pity.”

“Is that—” Kaz said, and laughed. It wasn’t flattering. But ok, he could work with that. “All right,” he said. “Show me.”

The wattage on the smile Big Boss gave him could light up a small city. “You’re on,” he said.

 

* * *

 

Kaz liked to think, in later years, that he taught Snake everything he knew about sex. It was a petty, and above all, small thought to have — what kind of victory was that, in the face of every other humiliation?

Even to have the thought at all, he was admitting defeat. Wondering if Big Boss had been with anyone since him — knowing the man, it was entirely possible he hadn’t, but on the other hand, Ocelot?

The idea of it turned his stomach.

Enjoy it, you son of a bitch, he thought, viciously and crudely. My handiwork. I made that man. He was mine, he belonged to me. I shaped him, I brought it out in him, my fingerprints all over him.

It was a lie of course. Kaz may have taught him a few tricks in bed, but Big Boss had never belonged to anyone, except perhaps the Boss. What difference did it make? What difference did Kaz make?

None.

The knowledge was ash in his mouth.


	3. close the door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally Ocelot spread his palms and said, “Well, that’s about the long and short of it.”
> 
> So that was how it was then.

“Who is he,” Kaz demanded.

Ocelot just looked amused. “Close the door.”

“Who. Is. He.”

“Figured it out, have you?”

Kaz didn’t even stop to think. He lifted his cane and struck, sweeping everything off Ocelot’s desk in a clatter: pens, paperwork, the radio, a mug of dark tea, which shattered on the floor in a wet explosion.

“You son of a bitch, if you don’t tell me right this second—”

“You were faster than I thought you would be. I thought it would be a little while longer before you figured it out. I guess I underestimated your—” Ocelot paused, his mouth twisting with the slightest distaste. “But you’re right, of course. It isn’t him.”

Kaz flushed at the implication.

“Do you want me to shove this cane down your throat or are you going to answer the fucking question?”

“Give me a moment, Miller, I’m collecting my thoughts.”

It was too much, the smug bastard. After everything, the years of putting up with him, years of swallowing his pride and being kept in the dark, and then this fucking trick on top of all that, and he still had the gall to condescend to him now — Kaz lunged for him. But, of course, he didn’t even connect. A man who could barely walk trying to take down a GRU operative who’d trained with Big Boss himself, what did he think he was doing?

Ocelot stood up with a sudden feral grace, pivoted out of the way, and knocked him face-first into the desk. The last thing Kaz remembered was the taste of blood in his mouth and the thought, though it came without any particular conviction: _it would be just icing on the cake if I died from this_. But part of him wanted it to happen.

It wasn’t much better when he woke. He was tied to a chair. Ocelot had considerately chosen to deliver the truth like one of his infamous interrogations. Kaz heard the words but barely registered them. In the back of his mind, he thought: _he’s probably wanted to put me in this chair for years_.

As if reading his mind, Ocelot said, pausing his monologue, “Let me know if the bindings are uncomfortable; it just seemed easier to get this taken care of without having to fend off another clumsy assassination attempt.” This delivered with, of all things, a small smile.

Kaz stared implacably at him until he began to talk again.

Finally Ocelot spread his palms and said, “Well, that’s about the long and short of it.”

So that was how it was then.

Kaz took his time looking around the room: the steel struts of mother base, the equipment, the painted walls. He remembered overseeing the construction of this very room. It was his. He had built it. He had bled for it, fought for it, sold his soul and his pride and his dignity for it. For this, this dream, this home, this hope for the future. Nine years and everything he had to give and then some, for a man who —

At last, he croaked, “What was it all for?”

It was a mistake to even ask.


	4. there is nothing left inside me now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No,” Kaz said humorlessly, “That’s right. We exhumed the corpse. Disinfected you inside and out. You’re good to go.”

Times like this Kaz felt he could almost grow to care for V. There was something there, he thought, scabbed over and ugly as it might be. It was not much. It was not passion, and it was not love; if he had to put a name to what they shared, it was suffering. Even thinking it made him feel small and self-pitying, but what else did he have left except pride and self-pity?

Other times he would glimpse V sitting at the edge of a pier gazing out over the ocean, and he’d go on his way only to pass by again hours later and find V hadn’t moved an inch. What was he doing there? What was he thinking? Was it like a machine, standing by? A drone, flying a holding pattern? What actually existed inside of V that constituted a man?

Troubled by too much philosophy, he took a late night stroll to the R&D platform one warm and humid evening and sat in front of the AI Pod, watching it, listening to its endless cries for help. It was common enough for animals to continue moving minutes after being beheaded; Kaz had even heard once of a chicken that had lived for years after decapitation. Its owners had paraded it around the country making a living selling tickets for viewings; someone had had to syringe-feed the beast every day to keep it running.

“Strangelove,” he murmured. “What did you do?”

“Strangelove?” the pod repeated, catching his voice. “Strangelove.”

It was too eerie to stay for long. He waited its queries for the dead out in silence until it resumed its usual loop of lamentations, and then picked himself up and left.

It was no wonder V seldom came to this platform. Once, when Kaz had been with him overseeing inventory, they had passed too close to the AI Pod and shaken it out of its reverie.

“Jack?” it had said plaintively. “Jack?”

V never spoke to the pod. Kaz caught him glancing at it once or twice, but his expression was distant and inscrutable.

That was it though, wasn’t it? There was something there. After everything Ocelot and Zero had done to him, there was still something there.

Kaz wasn’t sure what was more unnerving — the occasional glimpses of V’s humanity, or the long lapses in between: his strange, empty silences, or worse, the stretches of time in which he seemed so perfectly in sync with the real Big Boss that even Kaz himself would forget for a moment all over again.

 

* * *

 

“There is nothing left inside me now,” said the AI Pod.

“No,” Kaz said humorlessly, “That’s right. We exhumed the corpse. Disinfected you inside and out. You’re good to go.”

“Kill me,” she said.

For some reason, after all these years, Kaz still couldn’t bring himself to pull the plug.


	5. nothing but white noise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s,” Kaz said.

He had slept with him but once, just the once, just after being discharged.  Snake had come up to his room, and Kaz, fresh out of the sickbay and high on his own suffering, had looked into Snake’s eyes and seen in his searching gaze a mirror of his own longing.

“Boss,” he’d said throatily, and for a moment forgetting the state of his own body, had leaned back in his seat and let his knees spread.

He’d watched Snake’s eyes dart quickly from his face down between his legs, then back again.

“C’mon, Snake,” he’d said, in as good an approximation of seduction as he could manage under the circumstances.  “You’ve kept me waiting long enough.”

Pathetic.

Afterwards, Kaz had dozed off in his cot, and when he came to, he found that Snake had left already.  Even then, he had found it remarkable that Snake had taken the time to clean Kaz up, to tidy the bed and roll Kaz on to a fresh towel.  He’d even left a glass of water at the bedside.

And during, he’d been gentle, attentive where the real Snake, Kaz’s Snake, had only ever been selfish, oblivious.  Kaz had always considered it a strange charm point of Snake’s, the way he fucked — when Kaz managed to get under his skin — with an animal neediness, no sophistication and all honesty.

He should have known then.  But he had wanted it.  He had wanted to believe that nine years away was the reason for it, had luxuriated in the illusion of being cared for and treated like something precious, lost and then found again.  He had wanted to be blind.  That was the problem.  He had wanted it too much.

That was the last time.

The next time Kaz tried, Snake’s walls were up.  He still touched Kaz and allowed himself to be touched by Kaz; when Kaz stumbled, Snake’s arms were there to guide him gently back to his feet.  But he wouldn’t fuck him anymore.

Had he known, even then?  The idea made the bile rise in Kaz’s throat.  Had he  _known_?  Was Kaz the only one who didn’t know?

After Kaz found out, he went looking for him.  The next time V came back to base, Kaz was waiting.  In front of six bewildered staff members, he thumped up to V, threw aside his cane, grabbed him with his one good arm, and kissed him, viciously.

“You’re going to take me back to your room,” he whispered hotly into his ear.  “You’re going to fuck me, and you’re going to like it.”

For a moment, V hesitated — that telltale hesitation that Kaz should have known all along was not Snake, not his Snake — and then his hands went down to Kaz’s hips, and Kaz felt him take a deep and shaky breath.

“Kaz,” he said.  “Let’s not—“

“Let’s,” Kaz said.

 

* * *

 

If Kaz had thought they had talked very little before, they talked even less once they started fucking. V was certainly willing; after holding Kaz at arm’s length on the helipad and staring searchingly into his eyes, he had, with a surprising decisiveness, heaved Kaz up onto his shoulder (just like that one time, Kaz thought hysterically), and then walked them both up three flights of stairs with God and all of Mother Base as his witness.

He was rough this time; maybe he knew it was what Kaz needed. The thought alone made Kaz despise him even more.

 _Wrong_ , Kaz thought. The smell of him, the feel of him. He should have known. He should have known all along. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t known.

The rumors flew. It didn’t matter. Back in the Caribbean, back when it had mattered, back when it had been something a little too close and a little too precious, Kaz had exercised discretion in so far as he was able. It wasn’t that he was ashamed; he just needed to stay ahead of it somehow. It would be real if he wasn’t careful, and he wasn’t ready for it to be real.

 _Well_ , he thought dryly. _It’s never going to be real now, Kazuhira, so there’s one problem squared away._

 

* * *

 

The rumors after that were unquenchable. Everywhere Kaz went, voices fell silent, speculation cut short as the subject of conversation thumped into sight. Kaz hid himself in a locker once just to listen in.

“Is it true that the Boss and the Commander —“

“But what about that creepy woman he was always with?”

“Yeah, did anyone ever hear what happened to her?”

“Do you think Commander Miller’s gonna let up on us a little now that he’s getting laid regularly?”

“Are you kidding me? The guy seems more wound up than ever.”

“Yeah, I just don’t get it. What does he even want? You know, frankly, I wouldn’t mind being in his shoes once in a while —”

“You mean with the Boss?”

“It’s not usually my thing, but you know, somehow —“

“No, I hear you.”

If Ocelot heard anything, he gave no indication of it. But there was no way he couldn’t have known.

“Are you going to tell him?” Kaz demanded one afternoon, shutting the radio off as V reported heading out for supplies.

The room had always been small and cramped, the two of them running intel for V, trapped together between four walls and a forest of wires, united in nothing except a shared desire to serve the man the world recognized as Big Boss. Whose brilliant idea had this been, anyway?

Ocelot looked up at Kaz and smiled vaguely. “Is that what you want me to do?” he said.

Kaz stared at his smug, condescending face for a long moment before he said, “You know what? Fuck you. _Fuck you_.”

As he thumped out, he heard Ocelot call after him, “It’s because you do things like this, Kazuhira, that no one trusts you to keep a secret. You’re too volatile.”

Yeah, fuck Ocelot. Fuck Zero, fuck Cipher, and fuck Big Boss.

Hours later, V found him at the end of one of the lower decks on the support platform and sat down next to him in the dappled shade of a perforated walkway. He’d brought his dog — wolf, whatever — and DD, not one to hold a grudge, nudged his wet nose hopefully into Kaz’s palm.

Kaz looked down and scratched him behind the ears.

“I don’t love you,” he said.

“I know,” said V.

“I’m using you,” he said.

There was a world of weary patience in the length and depth of V’s sigh.

“I know,” he said. “It’s ok.”

“Is it that obvious?”

V snorted. “Don’t worry, Kaz, it’s just sex.”

Kaz felt the view before him blur wetly for a moment before he got himself back under control.

“You’re nothing like him, you know,” he said.

When V spoke, it was slowly, the stilted thoughtfulness that Kaz had come to know as a quirk purely V’s. “I am everything like him,” he said. “Because I am him. I have nothing left inside me except him.”

He reached out and patted Kaz’s hand awkwardly.

“But thank you.”

For a half a second, Kaz wanted to hit him, snarl, "It wasn't a compliment," but the moment passed as soon as it came over him. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.


End file.
